Workplace communication has been a major focus of the year, with companies left and right taking advantage of the fact that many employers cannot yet return to the office. Many have been pushing their business tools and productivity apps, while others have been focused on ways to expand their business to better accommodate for the new status quo. The latest expansion comes in the form of Salesforce, as it has announced its acquisition of Slack for a staggering $27.7 billion.
To give a little perspective, Slack went public last year for $19 billion before seeing its shares fall. But the offer from Salesforce, which provides a suite of sales and marketing software tools, highlights just how important it is to meet the new remote workplace demands. Together, the companies plan to combining their extensive app ecosystems to create a comprehensive platform that brings together all aspects of a company’s existing workflow, as highlighted by Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff.
“Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world. I’m thrilled to welcome Slack to the Salesforce Ohana once the transaction closes.”
Move comes just as Amazon announced its own extended partnership with Zoom, which is poised to further take advantage of the growth in video communication. Google and Microsoft have also both seen their daily usage grow significantly this year with their respective communication’ ness offerings. Interestingly, Slack has previously rejected takeover offers from each of them, even calling Microsoft a bully for bundling Teams within its own office products, making it “tough to compete”.
Thanks to this new acquisition, it’ll be much better equipped to compete with the big boys. Both Slack and Salesforce will benefit from this deal, as the former extends its enterprise footprint, and the latter will integrate Slack’s communication tools into its own cloud offerings. It will likely replace Salesforce’s own collaboration tool, “Chatter”, which isn’t exactly a hit.
The deal is expected to close around Salesforce’s fiscal second-quarter of 2022, pending board and regulatory approval.
